


and the sand between my toes

by Emmar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Female Character of Color, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmar/pseuds/Emmar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camellia Potter discovers there's more to life than she'd ever have imagined - even the fact that someone's trying to kill her can't ruin this.</p>
<p>(A rewrite like you've never read before.</p>
<p>Tags added as necessary.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the sand between my toes

**Author's Note:**

> The first of what will hopefully be a complete rewrite of the Harry Potter series!
> 
> The main thrust of the 'verse is this: All your faves are girls. Most of them are trans. Some of them are non-binary. There is a total of one male character planned right now, and even he's a demiboy. Several problematic characters who are (by JK's reckoning) supposed to be protagonists will be almost unrecognisable as their canon selves.
> 
> Any serious warnings will be added in notes at the start of chapters as necessary, though this should all be on par with the original novels; **implied child abuse/neglect cw** for this chapter, therefore.
> 
> (Title from Cherry Ghost's _Thirst for Romance_.)

The Dursleys, at Number Four Privet Drive, were perfectly ordinary, thank you. Their front garden was the best-kept on the street, roses neatly pruned and borders weeded, and their shed was an exquisite shade of eggshell. Mr Vernon Dursley was moving up in the world, soon (he hoped) to enter a position at Grunnings Ltd that afforded greater pay for fewer hours, and Petunia was the very image of a suburban English housewife (that is to say, she gossipped outrageously and disapproved of anything one might consider less than ordinary). Dudley Dursley was, to be kind, unpleasant in both manner and figure.

There was a fourth occupant of the house, though, that was neither spoken of or to, if it could be helped. And that occupant was called not by their name, but most frequently by--

“Boy!”

Camellia Potter sighed gustily and sat up in the cupboard under the stairs, careful not to hit her head on the bottom of the steps that served as her ceiling.

“Coming, Aunt Petunia!” she called, already struggling into her over-large hand-me-down clothes with the speed of long practice.

Camellia Potter had not been born Camellia, of course - indeed, nobody called her that but herself - but it was certainly what she thought of as _her name_. The name her teachers called her by, which she hadn’t known at all until she started school, sat awkwardly on her tongue, and she answered to it haltingly. She forgot entirely sometimes that it was her they meant to speak to at all, in fact.

And she was the one abnormal thing about the Dursley household, that one mark that so drove them to show the rest of the world just how _normal_ they were. She wasn’t ever quite sure why - perhaps it had something to do with her parents, about whom Aunt Petunia had said only that they were drunkards, dead in a car crash. Or perhaps, she thought some days, it was because of her skin. She didn’t like to dwell on it often, but there was no getting away from the fact that she was very much brown, and Little Whinging was a very, very white town. It hadn’t, she thought, taken much on Aunt Petunia’s part for people to see her as a miscreant.

Still, at least at school she could hide in the library at lunch; no danger of Dudley and his gang finding her _there_. No such luck at Privet Drive. When Camellia emerged from her cupboard, Aunt Petunia was standing in the kitchen doorway and scowling.

“You get five minutes in the bathroom,” she said, and Camellia nodded and took off up the stairs like a shot. Five minutes unsupervised in the bathroom after her disappearing-glass escapade the week before was practically a _gift_ , though ten would have given her long enough for a shower instead of a flannel wash. Still, she hurried back downstairs feeling marginally more alive, damp hair pulled back and tied in a (literal) knot, hands itchy from scrubbing.

Aunt Petunia looked at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed, and then jerked her head in the direction of the back door.

“Garden,” she said.  
“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” murmured Camellia, though her aunt had already turned to go into the living room.

Camellia didn’t actually mind gardening all that much - it was a spectacularly sunny day without being too warm, and she’d overheard on the news last night that it wasn’t supposed to rain until next week.

A day spent in the back garden weeding was the best she could have hoped for, all told, with Uncle Vernon off playing golf and Dudley out no doubt wreaking havoc with his gang. Aunt Petunia only disturbed her once, at lunch, to noisily drop a battered metal tray with a slice of bread on onto the back step. She was by and large ignored as she served dinner, and she escaped back to her cupboard with two slices of cold beef and a slightly burnt roast potato, a veritable feast.

Really, she ought to have known something would go wrong the next morning, after such a lovely day.

“Boy! Fetch the post!”  
“Yes, Uncle Vernon,” she murmured, automatically ducking under his swinging open hand and making for the front door. She flicked through the post briefly as she came back into the living room, and it was as she paused on one letter, heavy parchment and emerald ink, that Dudley snatched it.  
“What’s this?” he said, and Camellia squashed the impulse to snatch it right back. “Dad!” her awful cousin yelled then, though Uncle Vernon was sitting right there on the sofa, “freak’s got a letter!”

“What?” said Camellia, faintly, at the same time as Uncle Vernon bellowed it.

Why on earth would someone be writing _her_ a letter? It was a question that seemed likely to go unanswered, as Aunt Petunia had taken one look at the letter and demanded Uncle Vernon get rid of it immediately, and Camellia had been banished to her cupboard post-haste. Even the arrival of another letter the next day didn’t give her any answers, as she was now forbidden from picking up any of the post. It wasn’t until the storm of letters in the living room that she finally caught one and had the chance to see the name written on it - _Miss C. Potter_ \- and that it was addressed, of all things, to the cupboard under the stairs, before Uncle Vernon grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her out into the hallway.

“Pack your things,” he said shortly.

The succession of cheap hotels was quite a nice change of pace, Camellia thought, though she could do without all the owls making Uncle Vernon more and more angry - with her, though she couldn’t figure out why.

And then they were in the hut on the rock, and she blew out the candles on her little dusty image of a birthday cake, and someone knocked on the door.

Camellia stayed right where she was, sat cross-legged on the floor, as her family panicked and dithered and Uncle Vernon produced a shotgun from god only knew where. When the door came crashing down, the figure stood behind it could only be described as a giant, and the impression was not much changed when they stepped into the light and Camellia could see the flowers in their beard.

“There y’are!” the giant boomed, looking right at Camellia, and she silently pointed at herself. Surely they couldn’t actually have been looking for her? But it seemed indeed they could, and she got to watch the Dursleys get at least a little of what they deserved.

“It suits you,” she said to Dudley, still squealing and trying to hide his little curly tail with his hands.

“Now then, lil’ ‘Arry,” said the great intruder, who had introduced themself as Hagrid, and then paused when she tugged gently on their sleeve.  
“It’s, um, Camellia, actually,” she said, saying it out loud for the first time, and Hagrid’s face split in a gentle smile.  
“Right y’are, sorry ‘bout that. Camellia, then. I got a couple things for yeh.”

And then Hagrid retrieved from the huge pockets of their coat a slightly battered box and an envelope.

The envelope, like the others, was addressed to _Miss C. Potter,_ though this time the address itself was _The Hut On The Rock_ , and Camellia struggled through the letter itself twice before she turned to stare up at Hagrid. _Magic_. She had magic, and she was supposed to go to a school full of it.

“Are you sure?”  
“Pos’tive,” they replied, and then offered her the box in their other hand. “Might be a bit squashed, sorry.”

The cake inside the box was indeed a little squashed, but that was more than made up for by the words _Happee Birthdae_ drawn painstakingly across it in icing, though there was a large part of the bottom that looked as though Hagrid had hurriedly swept a name away with their broad thumb.

“It’s brilliant,” Camellia managed, throat suddenly tight, and grinned up at the giant who had swept in so unexpectedly and changed her life. “I’ve never seen a nicer cake.”


End file.
